


Your Beauty Can Even Make Hell Have a Winter

by mountainsbeyondmountains



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Fluff and Angst, It gets happier, Vignettes, after the War for the Dawn, whole bunch of tropes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-02-27 16:13:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13251861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountainsbeyondmountains/pseuds/mountainsbeyondmountains
Summary: "I sing love songs and carry steel"- Charles BukowskiIn which Jon wins the war, but winter still lasts ten years.





	1. Grand Northern Conspiracy

He is, like almost every morning, in the godswood, sharpening Longclaw to an invisible edge. Sansa wonders what danger it is he's preparing for. The White Walkers are vanquished, and no one dares face him in the training yard. He's too ferocious. 

Ghost, at least, is excited to see her. The wolf pads through the snow and runs happy circles around her before dutifully settling at her feet. His ruddy gaze is almost adoring when Sansa sinks her leather-gloved fingers into his fur. 

Her emotions were always linked with Lady's- who she trusted, the wolf trusted; who she loved, the wolf loved. But Ghost's master doesn't even look up when she says his name, softly at first, then insistent.  _"Jon."_

He sounds so weary as he continue to run the whetstone down the blade. "What is it, Sansa?"

She strides over to hand him the letter, then refuses to retreat. Before he even unfolds it to read, he says, with the absolute insolence to sound angry, "This is meant for me. Why did you open it?"

"Forgive me for taking certain measures when I suspect people are plotting against me."

"No one's plotting against you, Sansa."

"Are you sure?  _Read_."

She tries to decipher some reaction in his face as his downcast eyes absorb the words. Sansa isn't certain what she expects- fury? Satisfaction? But Jon's expression remains guarded. She may as well be trying to glean a secret from the stone countenances of her ancestors in the crypts. 

When she first read the letter, she felt the shock of its message all the way to her core. It reminded her of escaping from Ramsay- the same brief sensation of weightlessness before bruising impact when she fell from Winterfell's ramparts, or the river's cold cutting clear to the bone when she crossed. She'd thought then that'd she'd never endure it, but here she is. In a way, she had more then than she does now. She had someone to guide her, a hand in hers, and hope.  _Go north, only north._ She'd thought Jon would protect her. 

Now-

She'd reread the letter once, then twice, praying for an error. But the words were equally unforgiving each time.  _The North's independence is imperative. Since the oldest Stark son has abdicated his seat and disappeared, Lady Sansa has the strongest claim to Winterfell. But a female alone cannot be expected to take up the responsibility of ruling our kingdom. She must focus on her duty of producing heirs. The lords of the north- Mormont, Cerwyn, Glover, Reed, Hornwood, Karstark, Umber, Talhart, Manderly, Ryswell, and all our vassals- propose a solution. You were crowned King in the North before the War for he Dawn. Your Targaryen heritage is unfortunate, but the Dragon queen is dead, and you have proven your courage and capability through the Long Night. If you were to wed Lady Sansa, become Warden of the North with Winterfell as your keep, and call your children Stark, we are sure peace and prosperity will return to the North, as things were under the leadership of your uncle._

A collection of sigils marred the bottom of the parchment. Traitors all. What would it take for Sansa to prove her worth to them? Without her, they'd have all starved during the war. She'd kept the troops from lunging at each other's throats. She'd _bled_ for the north. But just because she couldn't hold a sword, she ought to  _focus on her duty of producing heirs._ As if she were nothing more than a walking womb. 

"Did you know?" she asks her cousin.

"Sansa-"

"Did you know? I'll know if you lie, Jon, and if you lie, I won't do it. I won't marry you. The northern lords can hang."

"I didn't know," he swears so fiercely that she does believe him. She can't help it. He sounds like Father, who she always knew as an honest man, even if he wasn't truly. Jon crumples the letter in his fist. "Gods, do you think I want this?" 

Of course not. Why would he want the lesser ghost of a woman who despised him, sliced to ribbons and sewn up again, held together with ice and iron? "It's not about want," she lies. "It's about what's best for the north. The lords have a point, you know."

"Sansa, you don't have to-"

"I don't have to do anything." But she'd rather have the semblance of a choice now than a dagger at her back later. "Neither do you, Jon."

He rises, sheathes Longclaw. "I'll protect you, Sansa." They say that before the Battle of the Bastards, Jon abandoned his sword belt on the weeping earth, signifying that his intention to die with the weapon gripped in his fists. Did he regret it now, not perishing then? There's always one question on Sansa's mind.  _Was all the suffering worth this?_ To end up here? Sansa's unique curse has always been that her dreams come true in the worst way. She longed to go south, she longed for a gleaming gold prince, she longed to return north, she longed for a Dragonknight, she longed for Winterfell. None of her pleas went unanswered, and she doesn't even know what to want now, because she knows it will come to her warped.

"I suppose next time I see you here, then, will be for the ceremony. We'll discuss the details later." She wraps her cloak around herself more tightly. Ashen clouds are descending. The Others might be gone, but the maesters say this winter will last ten years. 

Jon does not accompany her back to the castle. He seems rather speechless, so she leaves him astonished beneath the heart tree. What Jon never learned, Sansa reflects, is that the trick to survival is not to remain steadfast, like stone. Monuments crumble eventually, after all. No, the secret was to imitate water, to be fluid, so that no one could ever hold you in their grasp. Crowns and coins and steel changed hands too easily, but the rivers continued to run and rain fell from sky on every corner of the seven separate kingdoms. There would always be more tears to shed.

 


	2. The Second Year

Faint but unmistakable, a scream tears through the peace of the Wolfswood. Ghost is beckoned by the sound. He runs from his place beside Jon’s destrier among the hunting party towards the castle, a pale streak barely distinguishable from the surrounding snowfall. Jon senses the direwolf’s sudden distress and urges his steed to follow, ignoring the fellow lords’ protests. 

The servant who greets Jon when Winterfell’s gate is opened appears anxious. “I heard a scream,” Jon says. Ghost has already vanished somewhere in the keep.

“All is well, Your Grace,” the servant replies. Jon doesn’t know his name. But he observes the man’s darting eyes.

“Where is Lady Sansa? She’ll tell me.” Sansa may have been eight months along, but she didn’t let that stop her from maintaining utter control of Winterfell. It was as if the very stones whispered secrets to her. Jon knew that if he outright asked her something, she wouldn’t lie. She may keep things hidden from him, but she wouldn’t lie. It was one of the sacred rules their marriage needed to last.

“Your Grace, it- it was Lady Sansa herself who you heard screaming. While you were gone, her- her time came, and she is now delivering the baby.”

“That’s impossible,” Jon whispers. “It’s too early.” As if trying to refute his claim, another agonized wail echoed through the castle. Jon suddenly remembered his mother, bleeding out among blackened roses. “Where is she? Why did no one send for me immediately?”

“She said not to tell you-”

“Why?”

“She said she didn’t want you to see her like this.”

Jon seizes the servant by the collar. He’d known that the household was more loyal to Sansa than to him. Of course they were- she knew all the names of the servants’ children, she mended their gloves for them, she was the queen both stern and kind they needed. They loved her.  Jon had never minded- he was not at war with his wife, he did not need to gather allies- but he’d never imagine she was capable of asking those who loved her to do such a thing to him. Had she meant to hurt him? Worse, had she not cared if she did or not? 

She even commands the loyalty of Jon’s own wolf.  _ Ghost.  _ Ghost can find her. Jon relinquishes the servant and leans against a nearby wall, allows his mind to retreat and link with his wolf. He’d mastered their connection during the war. Jon locates which door it was that Ghost was scratching at so anxiously, heard Sansa gasping and sobbing on the other side of it. When he comes to the proper room and pounds on the door, a nursemaid cracks it open.

“Let me see her,” Jon growls. 

“Please, Your Grace,” the nursemaid begs. “Be patient. You’ll only distress the lady.” Her face is streaked with scarlet, and that sight is what makes Jon meek. Bringing life into the world was a bloodier battle than killing. 

Jon lowers to the ground and waits. 

***

He and Sansa have been wed for close to a year now, though neither of them acknowledge this or ever speak it aloud. Jon is still not accustomed to answering to  _ Lord Stark _ , but Sansa has taken to ruling instantly. He supposes the task wasn’t unfamiliar to her- after all, hadn’t he left the north in her hands before? He’s content to do so now, for she is far better at it than he was. She is cautious when he is impulsive, well-spoken when he is mumbling, gracious when he is unsure. The right decisions he struggles to reach come naturally to her. Jon is certain she’ll be as excellent a mother as she is queen.

Jon did not know if he belonged in the ranks of those devoted to her but he does not know what he would do without Sansa. 

Each cry from the birthing room is an ache in the never-healed wounds of his lungs and heart. Usually she’s so silent. In bed, she is always quiet when he thrusts into her. She closes her eyes, clenches her jaw. Jon is ashamed of how easily he’s roused by her, ashamed of his eagerness, of the sounds he emits, ashamed of the lingering lust from the years she disdained him. He curls the bed furs in his fist to resist the desire to hold her flesh and mark it blue with his longing. The other hand clenches the headboard. He’s afraid he’ll leave scorch marks on the wood. When, at the end, his rhythm becomes faster, less restrained, no rhythm at all, she would often hook her arm around his neck, hoist herself up and bury her face in the crook of his neck, lightly kiss his shoulder. Often it becomes a bruising bite, though. Later, when she leaves, he’ll circle the mark again and again to try to recreate the pain of her affection. It’s the only thing she does that is not dutiful. Then he collapses beside her on the bed. Sometimes Jon will forget the way of things between them and try to stroke her brilliant lucky hair, and she’d leave the bed to pour herself some water or to stare out the window at the falling snow. 

He was almost disappointed when she announced her pregnancy in the sixth month. At least she let him hold her then.

Hours creep by, slow as a single drop’s descent down the Wall on a warm day. Jon ought to distract himself with his duties- that’s what Sansa would want him to do- but he needs to be here should she call for him.

Finally, the door opens. Jon startles, and he isn’t able to fully speak the question on his lips for he fears the answer. The nursemaid looks half dead, but her smile is a remarkable thing. “Your Grace,” she whispers. “The lady is sleeping- it was a difficult birth but she’s fine now- and the babe is all clean and wrapped in a blanket. You can hold him if you like. A little boy, Your Grace. Lady Sansa wants to name him-” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> baby name next chapter...


	3. Chapter 3

"Eyren, no!" Sansa scolds as the baby in her sister's lap extends a small hand towards a candle flickering on the nearby table. Arya encloses Eyren in her arms and draws him tight to her narrow chest. She'd returned to Winterfell only a day ago, but said she'd departed as soon as she'd heard of her nephew's birth. Sansa hadn't had a way to send her a raven. She had no idea where Arya had been, or what she'd been doing; when she asked, her sister only said she'd been someplace warmer than Winterfell and its eternal chill in the bones. Sansa didn't understand her yearning to roam. For years, all she'd prayed for was Winterfell's walls around her, and she now refused to be uprooted.

"He's a curious little bugger," Arya remarks as Eyren settles in her embrace. "Sharp. He'll be good with a sword, one day."

"I don't want my son to be a warrior," Sansa says. "I'm trying to bring peace to the north, so he'll never suffer the way we did."

Arya doesn't seem to share Sansa's faith in people's lasting goodwill, but she holds her tongue on the matter and instead asks, "Tell me, why did you name him  _Eyren_?"

"It's a good northern name. There was a Stark king named Eyren. I remember Old Nan telling us."

"Of course, it's a lovely name, but I thought you would have gone with a name to remember someone. Like... Robb, or Eddard. When I change faces, I always choose a name from someone I knew. Is that strange?"

"No stranger than changing faces," Sansa smiles, but it's fleeting. She's soon melancholy again. "He's just a little baby. He doesn't need to grow up being compared to ghosts who died too young."

"No, he'll live a long and happy life." The baby had calmed down almost completely, and each time his eyes blinked closed, they stayed shut for longer and longer. He was a child of the rivers, with auburn hair and Tully eyes. 

Arya abruptly asked, as she'd been waiting restlessly for a quiet moment when Sansa couldn't slip away or deflect the question the way she was so accustomed to doing, "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"How are you married to Jon? We were all  _raised_ together, and you didn't even seem to like each other as children. And you were so angry at him after what happened with Daenerys- of course, we all were, but-"

"That was a long time ago." Sansa reached out her arms, and gently, without waking him, Arya gave Eyren to her. "Besides, we have  _him,_ now, so it's all worth it, isn't it?"

"You always wanted your castle full of children."

"Yes, I did. I still do."

"You look like Mother and Father, you know. When the two of you stride around Winterfell like the royalty you are, finding solutions to every problem, inspiring adoration." Once, Sansa might have though that Arya was being jealous, or bitter, or hurtful, and her response might have been jealous, or bitter, or hurtful. Once.

"Thank you," is her reply instead. "Have you seen Gendry? On your travels?"

Arya startled at the mention of Gendry. Then she tried to conceal her reaction with a toss of her head and a disdainful look. "No. Perhaps. Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. When I saw the two of you together, I thought you might make each other happy." Sansa remembers the sly, shy looks they used to give each other when the other's back was turned. 

"Are you happy?" Arya asks. Sansa can't remember the last time she had to think of a lie for that question. She looks down at Eyren, runs her fingers through his hair, thinks about how Jon's hair may be a different color, but it's the same texture and fineness. One day, Eyren will have the privilege of his hair turning silver, the way Robb and Father never got to. And, in the moment, Sansa swears, Jon will have the same chance. She'll do everything in her power to ensure it. She doesn't need to promise on the power of the old gods or the new, because all they've done is take those she loves. She's done fearing the silent, vengeful gods. Let them fear her.

"Yes, I am."

 


	4. Chapter 4

Jon knows he should stop before he’s caught. He should turn back. That would be the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do, the chivalrous thing to do. All his life he’s striven to disprove people’s notions about him, the immediate distrust which stalks the name  _ Snow.  _ What he wants to do now is baseborn behavior. Jon can imagine Lady Catelyn’s horror if she were still living, but also her smugness that her misgivings were right all along.  _ Leave. You don’t belong here.  _

But they cut Lady Catelyn’s throat, and now her daughter is his wife, and he’s not a bastard, after all- so when Jon hears Sansa singing in the godswood, the sound seeping with the steam from the grove guarding the hot springs, he follows the song’s lure. 

Jon knows Sansa sings Eyren lullabies. Sometimes he hears fragments of the melodies, but Sansa always ceases abruptly when she becomes aware of his presence. This is no lullaby she sings now, but one of the songs of their youth. He almost recognizes it- a grand ballad in which the maids and knights are untarnished, and everyone dies in their lovers’ arms. Sansa insists she’s been disillusioned, and Jon always assumed their marriage reinforced this, but now he realizes that she could have been lying. 

And if not, Jon has the power to prove her wrong.

He hides among the trees and listens. He doesn’t look. That would be a betrayal of their fragile union. He just listens to her, and it’s almost as soothing for him as he imagines the warmth of the hot springs is for Sansa. It’s been a long winter.

Then Jon is betrayed. 

Mid-verse, Sansa stops and says, “Ghost, what is it?” 

As he hears the direwolf padding closer through the snow, Jon tries desperately to connect with his mind and send him back, but it’s no use. Ghost’s devotion to Sansa is stronger than their warging bond. He huffs in an almost accusing way when he reaches Jon. The direwolf takes Jon’s cloak in his teeth and guides him into the grove to stand trial with Sansa, who says his name in surprise. Surprise, not anger. At least there’s that. 

Jon makes a blatant show of not looking at her as he apologizes. “I’m sorry, I was at the heart tree and I heard you singing. I’m sorry. I’ll bring you lemon cakes or whatever you want. It was wrong of me.” 

“You’re just like Eyren when I find him misbehaving,” Sansa laughs. “And stop staring at your feet, I’m mostly decent.”

And so Jon glimpses her. She’s sunk low in the water, and her form is mostly obscured by ripples and mist. He can only make out the shades of her- loose hair incarnadine and skin glowing beneath her drenched shift. They’ve conceived a child together but still Jon has never seen much more of her than the long lovely slope of her neck and the rivers at her wrists begging to be kissed. 

“Well, I’m glad Ghost was protecting you the way I asked him to,” he says, because the mist is too beguiling, he feels it going to his head and there is the need to dilute the moment with meaningless words before he does something ludicrous like lay his sword at Sansa’s feet. 

“The way you asked him to?”

“When I… went south-” they seldom mention what occurred between reclaiming Winterfell and the end of the undead army- “I told Ghost to keep you safe. Watch over you for me. Of course, you were capable of looking out for yourself.”

“Thank you all the same,” she says.

“And Sansa, I really am sorry.”

“I’m not angry, Jon.” 

“I’m sorry for going south.”  _ And for all I did once I got there. _

“It doesn’t matter.” So maybe she doesn’t forgive him but maybe she doesn’t need to now. The past dissipates, and Jon could have never anticipated Sansa’s next words. “Jon, a king needs more than one heir. Soon Eyren is running around the keep now, and he speaks well. He’s not a baby anymore.”

Why is she mentioning this now, when all her usual silk and steel is gone? Surely she can’t mean- Jon won’t let himself hope that she means-

Sansa rises from the pool. The snow melts slightly at her feet as she walks over to him, has him cast off his cloak and lay down his sword. As Sansa kisses him, Jon thinks that this is not the kind of song they would have been allowed to hear at Winterfell in their youth.


	5. Chapter 5

“Stay,” he says to her, but it’s not a command. Sansa might almost think Jon is begging, but surely she’s mistaken. 

“It’s not as if I want to go,” she counters, trying to sound reasonable. Logic is her best defense against his fire. “And besides, I won’t be leaving for moons yet- Tyrion agreed that the meeting can wait until Arra is weaned.” As if she heard her name in her dreams, the baby Arra stirs in her nearby crib, and both Jon and Sansa briefly freeze to ensure all is well with their daughter. When she seems peaceful in her rest again, they resume their argument. Throughout the day, Jon kept trying to broach the conflict, but Sansa insisted that he leave it till nightfall, when they are alone in the Lord’s chamber. It’s important to present an undivided illusion for the people, especially with winter well into its fifth year. 

“Send an emissary,” Jon suggests, and Sansa is reminded of the time she herself uttered those words. Back when he gave the north to her. Since then, she’s never quite relinquished control of the land back to him, but he’s never demanded, either.

“Well, I can hardly send you, can I?” she snaps, because her mind’s been made up since the letter from Tyrion arrived, and it wearies her to hear Jon enumerate all the reasons she does not want to go.  _ Bad things happen with Starks go south. Especially you, Jon.  _ Her husband had too much of his upbringing, Eddard’s influence, and too much tell in his bloodline, inheritance from Rhaegar, to succeed in the south. Honesty and honor and melancholy and single-mindedness, all devoted to doomed good intentions. 

Jon doesn’t reply to that. Perhaps it was a low move on Sansa’s part. She knows all that transpired among the simmering volcanoes of Dragonstone and on the desolate tundra beyond the Wall are still vulnerable to Jon, for reasons she doesn’t care to know about. For a moment, Sansa is struck with empathy and almost understands her husband’s mind. 

Sansa unbraids her hair, the undoing of her own kind of elaborate armor, and lays down in the bed beside Jon. He kisses the nape of her neck and murmurs, “Please stay.”

***

Coming from the cold of the North, the Riverlands are almost warm. Tyrion chose the Tully family seat as a kind of neutral meeting place, an effort to ease Sansa’s discomfort and to try for reconciliation between the wolves and the lions. They talk of things Sansa knows Jon would have no patience for: trade and taxes, grain and gold, debt and death. Her former husband is still jovial, and still ever well fortified with wine, but his face is more scarred than ever, and wrinkled too now, and the wells beneath his eyes hold sadness and secrets that Sansa will not ask about. The wars worsened all its survivors. This is nothing remarkable.

He says she reminds him of her mother. She tells him he has his father in him, and they both straighten their spines under the shame and pride of legacy. 

Jon writes her letters that are not eloquent, and she sleeps with them under her pillow so that she can dream of Winterfell.  _ Eyren keeps asking when you’ll return. I’ve attached a drawing of an owl he made for you. Arra took her first steps two days ago. She’s starting sleeping through the nights easier for the first time since you left. A resolution has been reached with the land dispute concerning the Wildlings and the Whents. I hope Riverrun is pleasant. The whole North misses you.  _

***

There is a man, and he is not Jon. He is not like Jon, not at all. He’s tall- Sansa has to crane her neck up to meet his summer eyes- and words come easily to him. It almost scares her, how easily he can make her smile. He has a name, like all men do, and she has a husband. His name is not consequential. He is not consequential. She has a husband. 

Still, one night they drink entirely too much wine and he tells Sansa he loves her. He is so eloquent- he compares her eyes to water and her hair to flame and her skin to snow. Sansa can admit it is lovely to listen to, even if she doesn’t believe it. 

Eventually she says, once he starts describing how they’ll run away together: “And?”

“Well, I love you,” he answers aghast. “Isn’t that enough?”

“What can I do with love? Will it fulfill hunger, will it quench thirst, will it make crops grow, will it repair a crumbling wall, will it keep the fires burning- what good does love do?”

“It’s love. It’s a reason for living,” the man vows before leaning in to kiss her. Sansa leans back and firmly places a hand on his chest. A familiar gesture. So many men take and take and take. 

“I have a reason for living. My  _ children.  _ My kingdom. I have a husband.”

“Do you hold any love for him? Does he give you happiness?” the man asks. 

“He gives me… peace. And security. A home. We rule the North together. We raise our children.”

“But love?”

“He gives me enough,” she decides before returning to her chambers and falling asleep too easily. The next morning, she’ll return home, and the man won’t follow her. He can’t have loved her overly much.

 


	6. Chapter 6

"Who?" Arra asks Jon, pointing her small hand in the direction of new arrivals in the courtyard. Jon had chosen the second story passages surrounding the courtyard as their hiding place specifically for this purpose- to see while staying unseen. 

"That's your mother," Jon tells her. 

Below, Sansa dismounts from her horse and kneels to embrace Eyren, who runs into her arms. She kisses the crown of his auburn head and whispers something to him. He clings to her skirts as she rises to greet all those who welcome her back to Winterfell. Jon tries to read her lips. 

Outwardly, she's unchanged. Jon had thought he'd be able to see it somehow in her appearance or her bearing- that she might return in dressed in southern styles, or that she might seem to have lost sleep, or even that another man's hands and lips might leave some kind of lasting mark. But nothing visibly distinguishes her from the woman who departed so many moons ago. It was folly to think otherwise. Sansa would never reveal her secrets so easily. 

It's all lunacy. Why would she remain faithful to their forced union, when she grew a crown of winter roses from men's corpses of her past? Why wouldn't she pursue someone she might actually love? 

All of Winterfell's stone is silvered slick with ice, and every step is treacherous. Rain so cold it burns falls relentlessly. Jon can see Sansa's furs quickly become a weight that could drown her. Her hair darkens to a bloody shade. And she is still so beautiful.

"That's your mother," he says again to Arra.  _That's my wife._ "She's been gone, but she's back now. You don't remember her so well right now but she loves you very much." That, at least, Jon knows is true. 

***

Jon successfully avoids Sansa until the feast, which is thrown in honor of her return. Even then, he focuses the attention he would usually devote to his wife instead on drowning in his cups. She doesn't let on that she even notices the slight. Instead, she is courteous and captivating and charming, always so charming, regalling the entire table with tales of the Riverlands. 

At one point, when she's speaking of some witticism of Tyrion's, Jon asks her, "And did you accomplish what you wanted? While you were gone?"

"I did what I needed to do," she replies. "And returned as soon as I was able." She smiles at him, but Jon sees that her elegant mask is really a kind of armor, and that as soon as they are alone, there will be war between them. 

***

In the abandoned hallway, he can hear her following him- the sounds of her skirts caressing the dust on the floor, and the indignant rhythm of her steps. She catches him by the arm. It's a familiar gesture of hers. She can so easily persuade him with a simple touch. Once, she convinced him to stay alive this way. 

He turns to face her, and damn it if even now he doesn't want to lock her in his arms, despite him knowing the truth about who she is and what she did.  _It pains to me to tell you this but I would feel forever guilty if I didn't let you know, Jon._

"Jon, what's wrong?" Sansa asks. "You've been avoiding me ever since I came back. I know you didn't want me to go in the first place, but I don't understand what I did for you to be so vexed at me?" 

"You acted this way towards me once," is all he can think to say. Between the drink and the lies and the longing- for her hand still grips his arm and she is standing so very close to him- all logic has abandoned him.  _There have been rumors, from many trustworthy sources, about your wife and one of her uncle's vassals._

"What- that was  _years ago._ After you bent the knee."

"After Daenerys."

Sansa snaps, "You're not making any sense. She's dead and buried, I forgave you. What of it?"

"I don't forgive you, Sansa."  _Rumors that they are quite close, too close. It is unseemly. Their heads are often bowed together and they go on long rides alone. A maidservant saw him go into her chamber late one night. All the southern courts know._

"Forgive me for  _what?"_

"Samwell Tarly wrote me!" It all bursts forth, startling as a thunder clap and heat lightning on a tranquil summer day. "He told me of your dalliance with a Riverlands lord."

When Jon had first read the letter, he had thought: _is this how Catelyn Stark felt?_

Now he tries to pull away from Sansa, but she holds more tightly and raises a hand to his cheek, guides him to look up at her indigo eyes. "Jon, listen to me. Nothing happened. He tried to court me, it's true, but  _nothing happened._ I'm not disloyal."

And Jon wants to believe her, but he knows she was Littlefinger's student for far too long. "Sam was certain-"

"Well, if you want to believe Sam over your wife! We were never raised to place faith in southern rumors, Jon. I'm telling you the truth and that's all you should need to put this whole thing to rest. Does six years of marriage mean nothing to you?"

"Does six years of marriage mean nothing to you?" he flings back at her. "You said he tried to court you. Clearly, you did not refuse him firmly enough if all the other kingdoms know of your courtship."

As always when they argue, they are chest to chest, the opposite poles of magnets trapped in each other with no chance for escape, barely blinking as they each search the other's faces for any hint of weakness. "Fine," Sansa says. "I'm sorry. It was selfish of me, but yes, I let him compliment me, we went riding together, he sang me bloody songs, and I enjoyed it!"

"Why?"  _Why was I not enough for you, Sansa?  
_

"Because I'd never had that before! Don't you understand? You had your wildling, you had Daenerys, but who ever loved me? Joffrey was a monster and Ramsay even worse. Petyr said he loved me but betrayed me again and again and again. So yes, I enjoyed having someone worship me, even if they were just pretending!"

Her confession is a tangled knot of want and shame but Jon's attention is wholly seized by one aspect of what Sansa just admitted. "You think no one's ever loved you?" he says in a hoarse whisper, his fury dissipated.

She seems to have regret her outburst. She lets go of him and withdraws. "Well, yes."

Jon steps closer to her. She retreats until her back is flush with the wall and there is nowhere left to run to. It occurs to Jon that this night might be momentous for them as he repeats, "You think no one's ever loved you?"

"Yes, Jon, I do," she says, voice ripped around the edges. Her eyes are gleaming when Jon presses his lips to her cheek.  _Kiss her tears away, that's something a knight in a song would do._ He can still taste the salt as he kneels and lifts up Sansa's skirts slowly. His hands close around the edge of her small clothes and he grazes her thighs with kisses as she protests, "Jon, what are you doing, anyone could come and see-"

"Tell me to stop and I will, Sansa. I'll do whatever you say."

But she does not tell him to stop. She keens and weeps and begs him not to stop, hooks one leg over his shoulder, grasps his head so fiercely that his hair falls loose again, in a way it hasn't since he was young. Jon devours her. He has always been too afraid in the past, too afraid of hurting her, but now perhaps he wants her to ache for him and for him alone. He wants her to need him as acutely as he needs her. 

She shivers against him and swallows her cry by biting her fist so sharp that it bleeds. Sansa then drops her skirts back to dignity. Jon remains on his knees before her like a supplicant. She twines her fingers through his hair. He rests his head against the sacred space between her hips and sighs, "How could you ever think that I don't love you?"


	7. Chapter 7

The hour is past late. Ghost has long ceased his howling at the moon in the wolfswood. The moon is achingly full tonight, nearly bright as day, allowing no hiding places, casting the snow a shade not dissimilar to the blue of the hottest part of the flame. 

The northern folk are weary of waiting out winter, and tonight, given the chance, they had flooded the halls of Winterfell with ale and music and laughter. Once, Sansa might have deemed it unseemly, but now she is only glad for a locked door and silence and the solace of the Lord's Chamber. 

They share it, now, she and Jon. They did not used to. Before, she would visit when duty nagged her, or eventually, when desire struck her, and often would not stay til morning. But the night she returned from her journey south, she had beckoned Jon to the room he'd insisted was hers, and he hadn't needed much coaxing. In the morning Sansa found herself entwined with him, and his body mingled with hers was a welcome weight.

Now Jon asks her, "Why didn't you dance tonight? After the feast?"

Sansa begins to lower herself into the chair beside the oak chest which holds most of her possessions, and Jon immediately goes to help. She is nearly eight months along with her third child, and every movement takes certain strategy. Jon hovers near as she removes the pins and ribbons from her hair. "Sansa?"

"I didn't want to. That's all."

"I saw you watching them dancing." He's right.  _The watcher on the wall._ What didn't his grey eyes observe? He goes on to say, "I would have danced with you-"

"And hated every moment of it." Which is also true. Sansa recalls an afternoon only shortly before everything fell to pieces, the kind of afternoon she'd later long for, when Septa Mordane had tried to teach her and Arya how to dance. Jon and Robb were made their unwilling partners. Jon was so graceful when sparring, but forced to learn the steps of any dance, and he became hopeless. He and Sansa had glowered at each other for an hour straight. 

What would her younger self make of this situation, Sansa wonders.

"I would have, if you'd asked me to," Jon says.

"What a sight the both of us would have been. I'd worry you'd trip over my feet if only  _this_ weren't in your way." Sansa gestures to the expanse of her stomach.

"Is that what this is about?" 

"Yes, Jon. I'm enormous. I don't remember my mother ever looking like this." 

"Sansa, you look beautiful." He isn't deterred by her jagged laughter. Sansa takes comfort in knowing that the worst of her doesn't frighten him. "You do look beautiful. And you look strong. And capable. And radiant."

"Why, Jon Snow, you missed your calling. You could have been a poet," she teases. Beneath his beard, her husband might be blushing.

"I'm just telling the truth. You're like- did Arya ever tell you of the Nightingale?"

"No."

"The Nightingale is the name of a courtesan in Braavos. If anyone says she isn't the most beautiful woman in the world, then any Braavosi man has to challenge him to a duel to defend her honor." 

"So?"

"So, my lady," Jon says, laying a hand on Longclaw, still strapped to his waist. "I'm afraid I must challenge you to a duel for daring to say that Sansa Stark is not the most beautiful woman in the world." 

Sansa laughs again, this time with far more joy than chagrin. "Dance with me," she says, holding out her hands. Jon seizes her, and she wraps her arms tight around his neck, leans her forehead against his, closes her eyes. He clasps her about the waist. 

They don't imitate any of the convolutions from earlier that night; they merely sway in place. There is no music. The entire castle is quiet, the hush reminiscent of the trance cast by snowfall. 

"I think I feel the babe kicking," Jon says. 

"Whoever's in there is a dancer."

"It's late. They should be sleeping."

"They're awake because I'm awake," Sansa reasons.

"Aye, are they?"

"And they're happy because I'm happy."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hasn't it been a while?

**Author's Note:**

> title from "god is fair, sexy, nasty"


End file.
